Balancing around S+ Killers and SWF’s ruins it for M1’s and solo Q

well if you play a "fair" m1 killer then maybe. Thats why people tunnel. If you as killer are having silly fun as m1 killer instead of using S tier killer, meta perks or harsh tactics to compensate then you cant complain if you lose.

Likewise, as survivor, if your playing "fair", having fun with other team mates, generally having a laugh then you cant complain that a killer is steamrolling you.

Harsh reality is this…. if you want to win, sometimes you need to be ruthless, you need to do what needs to be done. This applies to both sides. killers may need to tunnel or use S tier killers with meta perks. Survivors may need to play more sneaky or selfish.

If you dont care about winning then there is no issue, have your fun, mess around, lose the match and move on.

Tunneling is a part of the game. Folks need to stop beating around the bush complaining about this tunneling boogeyman and instead should complain about the killer strength directly. Even if killers tunnel, especially the lower tier killers or “M1” killers, they can still lose, because the game is balanced around it. You are expected to tunnel. This is a whole different issue (if you consider tunneling an issue) and it shouldnt be a part of this conversation. Because every single killer can and does tunnel, camp, and slug, some just do it better.

then bHvr will have to rework a lot of things, from many perks to fundamental game design. Tunneling wasnt added in a patch, it existed since the beginning.

Of course any player can technically do what's within "the rules" of the game. But…people can still argue the rules should be modified. The anti-slugging, tunneling and camping changes would have incentivized less cheese tactics and more skillful gameplay from killers. But the killer mains didn't want to bother to adapt. Instead of completely scrapping the changes in response to the social media outrage, BHVR could have tweaked the numbers to be less "punishing", while also nerfing the strongest killers and buffing the weakest killers if necessary.

so instead of potentially being forced into tunneling, you expect 3 tactics to be nerfed? would that not force people into 1 play style of spread hooks? currently people have a choice, they can tunnel, slug, camp, spread hooks if they choose to. remove 3 of those tactics and killers are only left with 1 thing to do. sounds pretty linear and 1 dimensional to me. spread hooks, if you cant do that….tough.

Why would killer mains be ok adapting to the changes when survivor mains refuse to adapt to tunneling? its not like tunneling has no downsides or counters. there even perks designed to counter it. But instead of adapting and learning to counter it they complain. its not surprising killers then took the same approach.

I don't want tunneling, camping and slugging completely removed, just disincentivized. Currently they are simply too easy to do yet have a massive payoff. Currently, killers that abuse these cheese tactics can beat survivor teams well above their experience level. Killers would still be able to tunnel, slug and camp all they want, it just wouldn't be as effective a strategy as it is now, so killers would actually have reason to spread hook states and would be rewarded more for choosing the more skillful strategy.

Tunneling/camping/slugging are far more difficult for survivors to adapt to given how little skill is required for a killer to abuse them. A baby killer can have quite a bit of success with these cheese tactics whereas the survivor team needs to have far superior game sense to counter it.

if these tactics were nerfed but not removed so people use them less then they would need to be less effective than spreading hooks. killers are already struggling to spread hooks thats why they tunnel. if you make it so the killer has to do the already difficult thing (spread hooks) and if they cant then tunnel….but its been nerfed so tunneling isnt effective anymore. pretty much pushes that tactic out as a possible option by saying if you cant do the already hard thing then try doing somthing thats less effective? the only way that would work is if spreading hooks was made easier to do but no survivor wants that either

Which is why resources should be based around the killer you are up against. Why should Ghoul, Blight, Hillbilly, Dracula, Singularity, etc spawn the same number of pallets as Ghost Face, Trapper, Legion, Pig, etc? Makes zero sense. You don't need a variant for every killer either. Just 2-3 tiers would be better than the one size fits all approach we have now. It would essentially be selective pallet density.

They don't balance for S tiers and SWF, those groups just "play DBD better" than the rest. S tiers are where they are because they excel in macro play in the game's current state (lethality, mobility, unique necessary counterplay, etc,) and SWFs are able to bypass many of the information and coordination deficits the game is designed around. The only way to change those things is to change the reasons why they are considered so fitting for the game's current state, and in the case of SWF especially, thats a pretty hard thing to do without punishing people who just want to play with their friends. Normalizing would be buffing weak while simultaneously nerfing strong, but doing so in a way that their meta considerations are consistent instead of just dumpstering the strong and gigabuffing the weak. After how the fresh hook incentive went, I don't have any faith they could do this properly without it turning into a monkey paw that negatively impacts the role.

Thats exactly what i mean, hooking someone then going after someone else can mean wasting valuable time traversing the map looking for the next player, or wasting valuable time going for a pro looper when the weak link is free to crank out gens like theres no tomorrow. This time waste isnt a big deal to high mobility killers but its crucial for low tier low mobility killers. you just have to look at the kill rates to see things are the way the devs aimed for 40/60 balance and that is with tunneling. its pretty clear if it was nerfed to the point its no longer that effective kill rates would highly likely drop because so many rely on it to be able to compete. The fact a killer can tunnel the 1 weak link shows a smart way to way to play which can also be detrimental to the killer if they tunnel the wrong player. That is balanced and fair. it has its advantages and disadvantages. the only ones that seem to have an issue with tunneling are the weak links but instead of improving and changing how they play to counter this common killer tactic they push for nerfs. I say this as a survivor, in my matches im often the stronger player which means the killer abandons the chase before they can tunnel me out.

The thing about that is that you shouldn't be wasting any time looking for another survivor. You should already know where another survivor is and be going straight to them.

Now, I'm not saying everyone should be at the ultra pro level where you can track all the survivors reliably just from your own game sense, that's unreasonable. If you're not at that level, a good chunk of your info about where to go should come from either perks or just going to wherever the last survivor you saw is on top of the game sense that you do have - and no shade, that's where I'm at too.
What you're describing here isn't really an inherent problem with trying to spread hooks, it's just what you hone as you get better at killer. You get better at knowing where to go, you get better at not taking the wrong chases or letting chases go on for too long, you get better at outplaying survivors, and so on.

It's not an unavoidable time waste that lower tier killers just can't afford. It's part of the game's skill expression and skill curve. Reliably being able to tunnel someone out just stunts your growth as a player in this regard.

killers dont have basekit aura read for a start so killers shouldnt be able to know where survivors are. killers can guess but there is no way of knowing where they are…head to a wrong gen and thats time wasted. Thats not skill thats luck. head to a gen thats been worked on and people pre run….time wasted, especially when swf has comms that tell the team what direction the killer is heading to. as a stealth survivor i know how easy it is to work gens and disappear so the killer has no idea where i am. Even if the killer knew where the survivors are, they could be on the other side of the map doing a gen, its situational but in many situations its better time management to not waste time slowly walking to the other side of the map to encounter a pro looper near the a strong loop when the weak link is already hooked and in a weak loop area. its smart play that could have been avoided by the survivor heading to a strong loop location or being harder to catch. being able to reliably tunnel someone out shows smart gameplay, using the brain to work out if its worth tunneling that survivor or try a different target, knowing if its worth tunneling someone when they are at a strong loop location.

you say tunneling stunts growth yet you expect the killer to basically not target the weak looper and go for someone else when its the weak looper that could do with the practice in chases to improve. That stunts growth of the survivor, they wont learn to loop better because after being caught once the killer would need to target someone else which could be much stronger in chase.

on many maps line of sight isnt option, crows are useless, there are no loud noises unless close to a gen or someone messes a skill check, scratch marks wear off and only appear when survivors run. if people are already on gens they dont leave scratch marks, they dont disturb crows, so if a killer is one end of the map, there many gens people could potentially work on. if it was easy to find players i wouldnt be able to play stealth the way i do. These all seem like weak attempts to try and say low mobility killers can know where survivors are so target them instead of the weak link.

if the killer can down a player fast, they KNOW they can down that survivor fast again. it makes no sense to target someone else when there is a risk that they could be a strong looper. it makes just as much sense for a survivor to get a gen to 90% then move on to another one half way across the map when the killer is no where near the 90% gen. its actively making the game harder for no reason and creating unnecessary risks for the sake of it.

im doing fine in my matches as killer going against sweating SWF teams with tunneling, i win some i lose some. thats balance, thats how it should be. What happens when i dont tunnel? i lose match after match after match. fun? not at all. helps me improve? if it does then no where near fast enough to keep me playing. Thats why i tunnel, to balance the broken system of m1 killer v SWF on comms. before i started getting these teams i didnt tunnel at all.

Survivors can practice looping even if the odds are stacked. i did and now i can loop better for it. there was a time where i was tunneled quite a bit… i adapted, changed how i play, got better. we should be doing what we need to do, i did and both my survivor and killer matches are way more fun for it. Its a shame so many survivors in particular refuse to change, refuse to adapt, they DC, go next, give up, take the stubborn attitude of "im not using anti tunnel perks because i shouldnt have to". They often say "i just want to have fun" then complain about losing when they dont bring their A game and try as hard as the opponent.

Bottom line is, i dont see an issue, there are counters, there are drawbacks, its not 100% effective. i encourage anyone struggling as killer to tunnel if they need to…better that than quit the game out of frustration long before they "get better". And as survivor i encourage other survivors to play differently, play stealthy, if you cant loop, fine, stealth is a great alternative. But neither side should be complaining when they are counters available, there are options and choices people can make to make the game fun.

it is quite literally impossible to exactly know the location of a survivor unless you have aura reading on them. you can have an approximate location and be correct, but even COMP players use stealth for a reason. even if you somehow know exactly where a survivor is, it doesn't matter if all they do is run to the strongest part of the map. in this situation, if you chase them, then you are simply wasting time walking/flying there just for a slim chance to outplay them at a very difficult safe loop. no competent killer is going to bother chasing a survivor all the way there unless there's a very good reason, because it's just an extremely stupid play.

it's far better to camp and if viable tunnel the unhooked survivor at a bad part of the map. this is literally how the game is designed, 50/50 looping gameplay only gets you so far, you need to force the other side into disadvantageous situations by making good decisions too. you will see good killers tunneling and not tunneling depending on the situation sometimes it's better to spread hooks for pain res value and to avoid decisive strike, and sometimes it's better to tunnel out the unhooked survivor. another example of this is survivors will sometimes let themselves die at unsafe pallets instead of bothering to loop them, and coordinate with their team members to play for a save. just the sheer fact of bothering the killer and stopping him from picking up the survivor can be a huge time loss for what could be an easy down and hook.

by the way what would your thoughts be on the killer if he tunnels someone off hook, leaves them slugged, proxy camps the slug, and hooks them after 60 seconds to avoid decisive strike, regardless of whether or not he actually ended up hooking someone else in the process? isn't this practically tunneling just with buffer time in between?

Didnt the devs stated somewhere that they balance the game not around 50% of player base or to 5% but rather around the top 30% so the best one third. I think they did post it somewhere.